


The Color of Magic

by imbellarosa



Series: Where You're At [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi, TW mentions of sexual violence, and also, and her story, but very little romance, so only vaguely romantic pairings, this is also for me, this is for Her, this is julia, tw anxiety, tw depression, tw ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imbellarosa/pseuds/imbellarosa
Summary: Getting your shade back, she thinks as it merges into her, is not unlike being high off of laughing gas in the dentist’s office. It’s feeling everything in the most extreme version of itself. She sits down and she sobs and sobs and sobs and when she stands up again, she knows she is a different person than the one that sat down.





	The Color of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so if you've had to hear me talk about my writing at all in the last few weeks a.) im so sorry i talk so much haha and b.) you'll know that i've really wanted to write about Julia and her whole story, and so here it is. I don't know if it's my best work, but i do know that if I don't get something that centers around her now I'll never be brave enough to do it. So here it is, and i hope to revist her some day when I can collect my thoughts better.
> 
> And then there is the thank you to the people who have a.) listened to me about me and haven't run away and have made me feel like i am a human and not glass and have helped me heal b.) the people who encourage me to write, and write this specifically and c.) the people who scream about this show w me. This one is for ALL OF YOU THANK YOU 
> 
> The title is from a book of the same name by Terry Pratchett.

When she was eleven, Julia wanted to be a Fillorian Queen when she grew up. She practiced magic tricks and read every story about every magical creature she could get her hands on; and not any of that YA stuff that was beginning to get popular (though she did memorize Harry Potter as it came out), but real lore from the research sections of the library. She would have to be prepared when adventure came calling, after all. 

And then Q checked himself into a mental institution when he was seventeen and she realized that she had no friends outside of the one that just said he would rather be dead than stay in this place for one more day. With her. He would have left her, and they had been each other’s  _ world _ for such a long time that she had forgotten that there was a real one out there, and it was waiting for her. So she redirected the vigor of studying fairy tales to studying calculus, and she began to watch how her peers interacted with each other and she slowly and successfully began to mimic them. 

_ She had always been a master Magician, after all, and what is success but another illusion? _ This is the explanation she gave Q when he was cleared to go back to school and discovered that she had become popular overnight. 

“A lie, Julia,” he had told her, anger and frustration and so much sadness in his voice, and  _ it made her so mad _ .  _ He  _ had been the one who had wanted out, who had tried to leave. 

“No, Q, it’s not,” she had said, eyes fierce, tucking her hair behind her ear, “it’s reality.”

***

College was such a blur for her. It was Adderall and crazy sleep schedules and whatever miracle workout/diet could keep you going the longest. It was Friday nights immersed in smoke and Saturday mornings throwing up whatever she had managed to fit into her body the night before. She doesn’t think she could name one person that she still talks to from those years. 

She does remember, with shocking clarity, the first time she met James. When she had been small, she had always thought that she and Q would be together forever. And then she realized that she loved him, yes, but he was a flight risk and she could not be  _ in love  _ with a flight risk, and so she stitched herself up and moved on. James had been...beautiful. He had seen her for who she was almost immediately and had made her want to be better. 

They had met in the library, where she had been carrying a stack of books so high that it obscured her face, and he had been refreshing his phone to see if he’d gotten one important email or another and you know what? Sometimes life hits you in the face. In the best ways, of course. He had offered to pay for dinner to make up for the black eye that was slowly appearing on Julia’s face.

“What, are you kidding,” she had laughed, “I look like some kind of battered woman.”

“Okay,” he agreed, holding his hands in surrender, “But I know someone who makes a mean vegetarian lasagna.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Absolutely,” James had stepped just a bit closer to her. “And he would be happy to make some for you.”

Looking back, she thinks she was a little bit in love with him even then. That was still the best lasagna she’s ever had in her whole life.

***

Sometimes, life hits you in the face. In the best ways, yes, but in the worst ways, too. She was no stranger to loss or pain or heartbreak, but finding out that magic was real and that she had no part of it felt to Julia like someone had ripped out a piece of her very soul. A scar on her arm was a small price to pay. 

And maybe magic wasn’t meant to be a drug, but she swore that it was the best high she’d ever had, and she’d had some pretty amazing highs in college. Working with Marina seemed like a small price to pay if it served as a  _ fuck you _ to everyone who told her she couldn’t do it and  _ who the fuck did Q think he was? _ She had always been there for him, and fuck, so what if he loved her? He didn’t know how to be in love with someone, she told herself, because he had always been too wrapped up in his own  _ fucking feelings _ to notice that there was an outside world and he was meant to be a part of it. 

When she thinks about this thought process, later, she will know that it is anger and jealousy and  _ so much fear  _ that drives her, but when Q shows up to their headquarters with his fancy friend and their weird books after leaving her to fend for herself she sees red. 

“Love wins,” Q’s friend says, and smirks as he pulls  _ her  _ best friend farther away with each step they take.  _ Apparently it fucking doesn’t _ . 

***

Everyone says that in order to help someone they need to hit bottom. Julia thought that had been when she checked herself into rehab. Again. James was gone. Her sister was gone. Her parents weren’t speaking to her. Q was gone. She had hurt him so badly that she didn’t know how she would ever set that right and the sad part is that she just now realized how badly she wanted to set it right. 

_ I miss you, Q _ , she would think, sometimes, as she walked through the library in the rehab and let herself read the Fillory and Further books, because strangely enough, they didn’t trigger a longing for magic, they just filled her with a vaguely green color that reminded her of the trees that she would always climb, wanting to go higher, higher, higher, and see the world for what it was. 

***

When it was all over, her first thought was,  _ at least Kady’s alive _ . Her second one was  _ what the fuck do I do with myself now _ ? And her third one was  _ make it go away make it go away make it go away _ , and then she heard a noise as though it were coming from a wounded animal and she vaguely wonders if someone had hit a dog in the street and then she realizes that it’s coming from her, from inside the deepest and most broken parts of her soul. 

She calls Marina. There wasn’t anyone else she would trust with this. Not even Q. And then she blinks, and the world is in technicolor, and she can feel the tears that have crusted on her eyelashes, but she can’t remember why, or why there is a hollowness that has rescinded into the most hidden parts of herself. 

***

So she partners up with Martin Chatwin. Eleven-year-old Julia would never have believed what her life had become. But the Beast understood what this does to a person. How it mottles and crumples your soul and shatters you until all of the pieces have scattered so far in the wind that nothing and no one could ever put her back together. She was a piece of glass, and no one could ever change what she has become.

And this man, abhorrent, awful, all-powerful, understands what it means to be damaged beyond repair, to have nothing but  _ this  _ left to live for. Sometimes, she tries to remember what she was doing a week before that night. Sometimes, she tries to imagine who she would be now if it had never happened. Maybe she would have gotten a chance to really, truly fall in love with Richard. Maybe she and Q could have grown back together, instead of this ocean that had grown in between them, and then she was fucking  _ pregnant _ , and she wondered what she had done to deserve all of this.

Maybe it was turning her back on magic when she was a child. Maybe it was searching so desperately to get it back when she was older. Maybe it was being too weak or too strong or hurting too many people. Maybe she should have stopped him from hurting her, screamed louder, fought harder. Maybe she would feel better if she had started him down the whole time. If she had refused to make a sound. But she was who she was and it was too late for her.

***

Except  _ no it fucking wasn’t _ . Waking up without her shade was waking up to herself for the first time. The worst parts of herself. The parts that would go to any lengths to fuck up the people that hurt her and those she cared about. If she saw a forest standing in her way she would  _ burn it to the fucking ground _ . This was the woman she could have always been but never allowed herself to be. Strong. Vindictive. More power than she knew what to do with. She loved it.

Kady hated it. Kady, who was making her way back to Penny. Falling in love with him again, trying to trust that she is loved in return. Kady, who had run and would have to live with that for the rest of her life. Julia knew that she would spend all of it trying to make it right. And so they did this, instead. They hunted their fox with the coldness that only someone without a soul could have. 

And Q. Q who came back to her, and tried desperately to help, to understand. Q, who had lost his partner because of her choices and he loved her anyways, and tried to bring her back to him. So, when it was time to collect her shade, of course she wanted him to go with her. He was the best reminder of who she could have been all along, if she hadn’t lost herself in the  _ how to’s  _ of magic. She used to be kind and driven and forceful. At least that’s what Q tells her. The word she always thinks of now is  _ broken _ , and  _ maybe this is better. Maybe I don’t want the pain _ .

“Jules, no,” Q tells her one day that she expresses that in an offhand manner, the way she expresses everything now. “I...I want to say that I get it, but I don’t. I don’t understand what you’ve been through, and I can’t begin to imagine how you feel - or how you would if you had your shade. But you - you are amazing, okay? And, sure, you’ve made some shitty choices, but look around! Everyone has made some shitty choices. You did not deserve this. And I” - his voice cracks here and she thinks that if she could she would be sobbing so she’s glad she can’t - “I am so sorry that you have to deal with this. I should have been a better friend before, but I’m gonna do my best now, okay? So let’s just...find a way to get your shade back.”

She thinks that something inside of her has clicked back into place. She takes his hand and holds his gaze.

“Let’s do this.”

***

If you had asked her the second before she decided not to pull the trigger, Julia would have said that she was going to blow that  _ fucking fox  _ all the way to the Underworld. And then she thought about how it didn’t hurt - how nothing hurt, and if nothing hurt then what was the point? And then she thought of Martin Chatwin. How he had always wanted to be powerful, but never grew into anything more than a little boy who wanted to be scarier than the monsters in his nightmares.  _ She was better than that _ . 

So she takes her finger off the trigger. And she embraces this life that is spanned ahead of her in that moment- always asking if she is doing the right thing, always trying to remember what it felt like to love someone, to play pretend, to believe in magic. She isn’t giving up, she’s giving in, and in that moment, even without the kindest parts of herself, she no longer feels like glass. Maybe she is more a patchwork quilt, sewn together from the best and the worst parts of her life, and then, like a miracle, her soul is standing in front of her, and she embraces it.

Getting your shade back, she thinks as it merges into her, is not unlike being high off of laughing gas in the dentist’s office. It’s feeling everything in the most extreme version of itself. She sits down and she sobs and sobs and sobs and when she stands up again, she knows she is a different person than the one that sat down. 

***

Eliot finds her that day in her apartment and he tells her that they want to kill a god and they want her help to do it, and all she wants to do is curl in on herself and breathe and remember that the covers that hide her are soft and that if she closes her eyes she disappears because if she can’t see them they can’t see her, right?

“I don’t know what you’re going through,” Eliot admits, and she can feel the couch dip where he sits. “But I know what it feels like to want to disappear.”

She thinks that if the world were not ending, she would offer to make him a cup of tea. Instead, she dries her eyes, stands up, and tells him to lead the way.

***

When magic disappears the first thing she feels is relief. She never has to worry about Gods or Beasts or Shades again. And then the fear, because she had given up everything to be a Magician. It was a part of who she was down to her very soul - this she could say with certainty because she had actually  _ talked  _ to her soul. 

As she is thinking this, she feels a tingle running from her heart to her shoulder to the tips of her finger and she just - sparks. Not...for very long. But it is enough. There is something inside of her, trying to get out, and the first thing she thinks is  _ I have to tell Q _ . Somehow, in the search for herself, she had found her best friend again, too. She thinks it’s because they are so much a part of each other that there will always be a tether that connects them, and she wants to think that the tether is love, but she knows that that’s only part of it. The rest is shared stories and trauma and having each other’s back when no one else could. 

So she tells him, and they have a new quest. Seven keys. Her first thought is,  _ that’s it? _ Because after Reynard literally  _ everything  _ seems smaller. Funny how it happens that way sometimes. 

***

_ Our Lady of the Trees _ . She could, in the back of her mind, still hear Q’s thoughts. She knew that he was scared, and in pain, and prepared to spend an eternity alone in a cave with a monster so that the rest of them could have a life. And she sits and she tries her best to do what Iris says - to listen to the big picture, to create worlds of good to counteract this one of terror, but  _ that is her best friend and he thinks he is alone _ , and she finally understands.

She understands what she did not when she was seventeen and she understands what she could not when she was twenty-three and so scared and broken and alone. She thinks  _ we don’t want to be gone because we’re empty. We want to disappear because we are so full of the lies we’ve told ourselves _ . She knows that this one matters. That she could be amazing, and she could affect real change and protect all of the women who are like her, who have yet to be like her. And she also knows how easy it is to forget how to be human - how to love down to your very core. 

There is a bravery in fighting for those you love, even if you do not think that they love you. She knows that Q is about to give everything up, for all of them, and that if she does not help, it will have been for nothing. She cannot let it be for nothing. 

***

Julia thinks that she should regret her choice. She does not. She might not be a goddess but she knows that she could be again - they just have to find the right key, the right book, the right door to look through. There is an answer somewhere. And there is a man now, who looks like Penny, but looks at her like she is the beginning and the end of his world. She has never had anyone believe in her so blindly.

“I am a person,” she tells him, when he brings up the worst moment of her life and tells her that he does not want her to relive it. “And people heal.”

And as she stands there and is bathed in hot oil by someone that loves her without restraint or embarrassment or limit, she thinks that this is true. It has been years since she has been in love with anyone, but in this moment, she loves the man in front of her with a fervor that scares her just a bit. Of course, she will forget within an hour because reality will come crashing in and Q is losing his mind a bit and the world is crashing in on them, again, but for now there is this:

There is breath and body and mind and soul and they are hers because she has chosen to fight for this life that has twisted and undone itself in so many ways. There is a woman who was never meant to be a queen and so she became a goddess instead. As they stand on Fillorian soil, she thinks of the map she and Q had drawn under the table and she thinks  _ the world is so much bigger than this.  _

***

She does not know, after hearing the binder, who she will be in fifty years. She knows that she never, as long as she lives, wants to see her friends hurt the way they have hurt this year, and she will always love them best. She thinks that, in another life, things came easier for time. But they didn’t survive that one. She was going to make sure they survived this one. 

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to say a really quick thank you to you as well if you read the whole thing. Please let me know what you thought. Especially on works like these, comments, kudos, and interactions let me know im not screaming into the void. I'm on tumblr at imbellarosa.tumblr.com if you want to say hi or scream w me about this show! <3 <3


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